Torah Study Vayigash 5784

B’Reisheet/Genesis 44:18 - 47:27, Ezekiel 37:15-28, Luke 24:30-48

Torah Portion Bereshit/Genesis 44:18 - 47:27

Genesis 44:18–19 “Then Judah approached him and said, “I beg your pardon, my lord. Please let your servant say a word in my lord’s ears, and don’t be angry with your servant, since you are like Pharaoh. My lord asked his servants saying, ‘Do you have a father or a brother?’”

1. The word choice here is interesting and has implications of something else being said. Do you see anything in these first 2 verses to indicate this? #1

a. Please let your servant say a word in my lord’d ears - indicates Yahuda has drawn close to speak to Yosef so that only he can hear him.

b. ...don’t be angry with your servant, since you are like Pharaoh… This is saying the Pharoh is like Yosef and Yosef is like Pharoh, they both are men and both can die. Pharoh keeps his word and not as he pleases, is Yosef like this? Mistrayim had the rule of kings not the rule of law.

c. Do you have a father or a brother? The implication here is asking why was he curious about their relations? Their relationship is simply one of seller and buyer of grain, what does relations matter?

d. the bulk of this is that Yahuda has gotten wise that something else is going on especially now that Benyomin has been accused of theft.

RASHI Please, my lord, let your servant appeal to my lord. Literally, let me speak “a word in my lord’s ears” (OJPS). Let my words go into your ears. And do not be impatient. Rather, “do not get angry” (compare OJPS). We learn from this that Judah now spoke harshly to Joseph. You who are the equal of Pharaoh. “I consider you a king”—that is the straightforward sense of the phrase. Midrashically it implies: you will eventually be punished on Benjamin’s account with leprosy, just as Pharaoh was punished for detaining my greatgrandmother Sarah for just one night. Another reading: Pharaoh issues decrees but cannot enforce them, makes promises but does not keep them, and you are his equal. You said you wanted to set your eyes on Benjamin. Is this your idea of “setting eyes” on someone? Another reading: If you annoy me any further, I will kill you and your master too.

Michael Carasik, ed., Genesis: Introduction and Commentary, trans. Michael Carasik, The Commentators’ Bible (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2018), 391.

2. Why is Yahuda retelling everything that happened on the previous visit? #2

a. He has connected the dots and is letting Yosef know that he has done so without being obvious about it.

b. Even in the face of those that mean us ill we should be respectful. Defferment is a practice that has fallen by the way side.

NAHMANIDES My lord asked his servants. I don’t understand why Judah spends such a long time reminding Joseph of what had previously passed between them. The rabbinic explanation that Judah was asking Joseph whether his current behavior really amounted to “keeping an eye on” Benjamin certainly does not explain it. A ruler who demands that someone be brought before him certainly does not mean to give him blanket permission for whatever wrongs he might do, all the more so in this case, where he has stolen the goblet from the royal palace. And he did originally “keep an eye” on Benjamin with the good wish, “May God be gracious to you, my boy” (43:29). He even invited them all to a feast that he held in Benjamin’s honor at the royal palace. He had given them loads of things, including as much grain as they could carry home, which was much more than they had paid for (see my comments to v. 1). What else was Joseph supposed to do? But I think there is more here than meets the eye. Judah is trying to play on his emotions. Judah took Joseph’s claim to be a Godfearing man (see 42:18) seriously, as well as his behavior in mollifying them for the distress he had caused them. Here is what is going on in this story: Judah says, “We were forced by my lord’s questions to tell my lord about this boy. But we did not agree to bring him down here as you originally commanded. We told you that the boy could not leave his father. But with our lives at stake we did bring the boy down because of ‘the fever of famine’ [Lam. 5:10]. For you told us, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, do not let me see your faces’ [v. 23]. Our father would not agree to let us come down to get a bit of food until we were all in grave danger. Only then, worried and frightened, would he agree. Now, when he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die embittered. Let my supplication, therefore, come before you—to have pity on us and on the old man, and take me instead of the boy as a slave forever. I am in any case superior to him, and you will be acting righteously.” That is the point of this whole section. So when Judah tells him in v. 31, “your servants will send the white head of your servant our father down to Sheol in grief,” it may be a polite way of telling Joseph, “You will send the white head of your servant our father down to Sheol in grief.” (Exod. 5:16 has a similar expression.) The rabbinic idea that Judah is asking Joseph why he is not properly “keeping an eye” on Benjamin implies that “you who are the equal of Pharaoh” (v. 18) is a challenge demanding that Joseph keep his word about the test he had put them through. “You forced us, under tremendous pressure, to bring him down here.” Judah was afraid to say any of this more explicitly, but implicit in his words is the accusation that Joseph had used the goblet to frame them. The midrash that Judah asked Joseph whether he thought they were trying to marry into the family is the rabbinic way of saying that Judah was implicitly accusing Joseph.

Michael Carasik, ed., Genesis: Introduction and Commentary, trans. Michael Carasik, The Commentators’ Bible (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2018), 391.

Genesis 44:32–34 “For your servant became pledge for the boy with my father saying, ‘If I don’t bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before my father all my days.’ So now, please let your servant remain as my lord’s slave in the boy’s place, and let the boy go up with his brothers. For how can I go up to my father and the boy is not with me? Else I must see the evil that would come upon my father!””

3. Once again there is an interesting choice of words here. What could verse 32 also be saying?

a. Either Benyomin goes home or Yahuda will not.

b. If Yahuda will not go home then has limited options of what to do.

4. What could be implied by Yahuda’s statement in verse 34?

a. That his father would die and so would Yosef.

b. Yahuda will not leave without Benyomin.

Genesis 45:4 “Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Please come near me.” So they came near. “I’m Joseph, your brother—the one you sold to Egypt,” he said.”

Genesis 45:8 “So now, it wasn’t you, you didn’t send me here, but God! And He made me as a father to Pharaoh, lord over his whole house and ruler over the entire land of Egypt.”

5. Does Yosef contradict himself in these verses? Is there a deeper meaning?

a. HaShem always inteded for Yosef and the house of Yisrael to go to Mitsrayim.

b. Yosef was inteded to go ahead of them to prepare a place.

c. It did not have to happen like this.

d. HaShem plans for our good and his pllan is so perfect it turns tragedy into blessings.

Genesis 46:1–4 “So Israel set out, along with everything that belonged to him. When he came to Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. In visions of the night God said to Israel, “Jacob, Jacob.” “Hineni,” he said. “I am God, the God of your father,” He said. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will turn you into a great nation there. I Myself will go down with you to Egypt and I Myself will also most certainly bring you up. Joseph will put his hands on your eyes.””

6.Why do we read in verse 1 he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Yitsak and not his fathers Avraham and Yitzchak as is the custom nearly everywhere else? #3

a. It was an alter that Yitzchak had built.

b. Our Sages identify Yitzchak with the trait of gevurah, strength. Specifically Spiritual Strength.

i. While it may seem that Yitchak was passive he was actually able to subdue the Yets harah (evil/animal inclination).

ii. his passivity is actually his ability to conquer and control himself.

iii. Yakov needs strength.

c. Yitzchak was a true living sacrifice and as such he never left the land of Yisrael. Yakov may be concerned about is it ok for him to go.

RASHI To the God of his father Isaac. A man is more obligated to give honor to his father than to his grandfather. That is why it is “the God of Isaac” here and not “the God of Abraham.”

NAHMANIDES He offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. Rashi’s comment just barely scratches the surface here. It should have said “the God of his fathers” without mentioning one to the exclusion of the other, as Jacob himself does in 32:10 and 48:16, or just that “he offered sacrifices to the Lord,” as when Abraham “built an altar … to the Lord” (12:7, 8 and 13:18). What need was there to say any more? But there is something more profound hidden in this verse, revealed to us by Genesis Rabbah. For when Jacob was about to go down to Egypt, he saw that the Exile would begin with him and his offspring, and he grew very afraid. So he offered sacrifices to the Fear of his father Isaac in order that the divine aspect of justice not target him. He did this in Beer-sheba because that was a house of prayer for his ancestors, where he had asked permission to leave the land and go to Haran. And note that these are not burnt offerings (as presented by Abraham) but “sacrifices,” that is, peace offerings. Jacob’s intent was to establish peace between himself and all the different divine aspects, beginning first with the aspect of Might, which was the closest to him. (That is what the expression from Genesis Rabbah cited by Rashi means; you are required to greet the student before you can approach the teacher.) I have seen the following in Sefer ha-Bahir: “Jacob had not yet been given his own strength; hence he had to take his oath through the strength given to his father.” From all this we can learn why it does not say here that Jacob that “offered sacrifices to the Lord,” and why Jacob is told in v. 3, “I am God, the God of your father.” (See also 31:13.) Jacob had already been privileged to receive his portion: “You will keep faith with Jacob, loyalty to Abraham” (Mic. 7:20). That is why “the God of his father” appeared to him “in a vision by night” (v. 2)—that is, in attenuated form. That is the name, and that is the attribute. He should not fear to go down to Egypt, for he would earn his judgment and be redeemed after the affliction (see v. 4). I will speak more about this in my comment to Exod. 20:16, with the help of the Holy One.

Michael Carasik, ed., Genesis: Introduction and Commentary, trans. Michael Carasik, The Commentators’ Bible (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2018), 401.

Genesis 46:26–27 “All the people belonging to Jacob who came to Egypt—those coming from his loins (not counting the wives of Jacob’s sons)—the tally of all the people was 66. The sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt was a tally of two people. The tally of all the people belonging to Jacob’s house who came to Egypt was 70.”

7. Let us check this verse with a cipher; 66 of Yakovs decendnats + Joseph’s 2 sons + Joseph = 69 where does the extra person come from to make 70?

a. Some sages are of the Opinion that the 70th person is Jochebed, Levi’s Daughter and Moses’s Grandmother/mother born on the exact border of Egypt and Israel.

b. Some sages say that the 70th person is Asenath, the daughter that resulted from Dinah’s rape. That some how the child had at a very young age become seperated from the family and was found by potiphera and raised as her daughter and was now Yosef’s wife.

Genesis 47:8–9 “Pharaoh asked Jacob, “How many days are the years of your life?” Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojourn are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life. Moreover, the days of the years of my life have not attained the days of the years of the lives of my fathers, in the days of their sojourn.””

8. How has Yakov’s life been few and evil?

a. badly made, of small worth, poor; contemptible, evil, reprobate

b. compare to Yitchak’s life.

c. Yakov was rescued from Esau, Laban, and Shechem. He buried Rachael on the road. He was returned Dinah and Yosef both of whom where kidnapped. He survived Famine.

Haftorah Portion Ezekiel 37:15-28

Ezekiel 37:15-28 details some of the things that must come to be before the Kingdom of Yisrael is reunited and reestablished. I have counted 10 events that must happen. Does anyone have any more from this section?

a. 21 - Bnei Yisrael must return from amoung the nations. More people of Israel live in the diaspora than in the nation of Israel by alot.

b. 22 one nation in the land - there is 2 nations in the land.

c. 22 one king - Israel does not have a king presently.

d. 23 no idols and no idolatry - not even the subtle idolatries that people do by custom or think they are serving HaShem with.

e. 23 no detestable (abomanable) things - Tel Aviv is the Homosexaul captial of the world.

f. 24 King of the linage of David, one shepard (Kohanim).

g. 24 Torah observant completely

h. 26 a covenant of Shalom

I. 26 Sancutary will be present

j. 27 dwelling place will be over them

Basorah Portion Luke 24:30-48

Luke 24:30 “And it happened that when He was reclining at the table with them, He took the matzah, offered a bracha and, breaking it, gave it to them.”

9. Why are they eating matzah and not lechem?

a. It is still during the feast of unleavened bread perhaps.

b. This would be an intermidiate day where work is allowed.

10. Why does Yeshua offer a bracha before they eat instead of afterward as the Torah instructs in Devarim/Deuteronomy 8:10?

a. He is a good jew.

b. Taanite/Rabbinacle sages established the tradition of praying before one eats as well as after a meal is finished. There is no reason for Yeshua to not follow this custom as it is not in conflict with the Torah and it is elevating the name of HaShem.

Luke 24:46–47 “and He said to them, “So it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for the removal of sins is to be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

11. If blood alone was enough to remove SINS and one needs is faith in that blood why does Yeshua state that repentance for the removal of SINS is to be proclaimed?